Bleed Red
by astronomyluvr
Summary: A serial killer has hit Hawaii for the second time. The team tracks him down, but with consequences. Rated safely for violence and one or two harsh words. I own nothing but a future copy of the first season on dvd. Read and review and enjoy.


_Bleed Red_

It was one of the many days that the sun shone brightly upon the citizens of the islands. The men and women that made up the surfing community were already out catching the waves while they could, their attitude laid back and relaxed. The natives joked among themselves, some even going as far as to avoid the tourists that wandered their beaches, or even the on duty officers as they made their rounds like usual.

Unfortunately, the peace didn't last long. A piercing scream rang out from a nearby beach hut and a figure staggered out unsteadily, covered in blood, clutching her throat. Falling to the sand, she shuddered and convulsed for a moment before dying, her blood stained hand falling limply to the ground beside her corpse. Her green jewelled eyes stared at nothing when bystanders crowded the area, almost refusing the cops access to her body, where they checked the pulse and declared her dead upon reaching her. One made the call for a coroner and for the state of Hawaii's Five-0 contingent to be called out while the other officer started on crowd control.

There was one thing on the island that brought the kama'aina and the haoles together – murder.

Daniel 'Danny' Williams waved to his daughter as he dropped her off at school. Sighing once the small figure had disappeared through the open doors of the building, he drove off to the beach where he and the rest of the team had been called out to, turning the wheel of the Camaro smoothly as he merged with traffic.

Having moved to Hawaii less than a year ago, wanting to stay close to his daughter, seeing as he only had partial custody of her, he had been recruited into the Five-0 team that consisted of three other members - Steve McGarrett, an ex-Seal and all out risk-taker, Chin Ho Kelly, an HPD detective who had been accused of being on the take when there clearly was no evidence to back things up and Kono Kalakaua, Chin Ho's cousin, one of the very few who didn't despise him, and the rookie of the team. Together, they were different from other specialty task forces, seeing as they had been given the go ahead to do anything it took to solve a case, and McGarrett took that to heart, using tactics that even had Danny wondering what kind of Hell he had arrived in.

Pulling up to the crime scene, he flashed his badge to a nearby officer and was waved through, immediately spotting Kono speaking to witnesses and the other two men of the team speaking over the body, gloves on their hands as they sorted through the victim's personal items.

"You're late, Danno," Steve remarked when he saw his partner walk up. He had taken up the nickname that he had heard Grace, Danny's daughter, say whenever she spoke to her father. Mostly, though, he used it to annoy the man into mini arguments as he liked to call them.

"Forgive me for having a life outside of this line of work," Danny sassed back, trying his best to ignore the annoyance that came whenever the ex-SEAL used his daughter's nickname for him.

Chin winced as he remembered something. "You had Grace this weekend, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, Rachel's picking her up today for some mother-daughter bonding time," the detective replied, referring to his ex-wife. Shoving all thoughts of his daughter into a box in the back of his mind, the man turned his attention to the victim before them. "So, what do we have here?"

"Meet Alyssa Lisbon, 29. She's from Queens, New York and works as a secretary in a growing small business," Chin replied, handing over the wallet that he had once the Jersey natives' hands were encased in latex to preserve the evidence. "This wasn't a robbery. There's almost two hundred in her purse and her jewellery is high end."

"It wasn't that personal," Danny noted as he took in what he could of the scene. "The killer was standing behind her when they sliced her throat open." He let his thoughts wander as something bothered him about the crime. "This seems familiar. Chin, do you remember if there were any other killings like this in the recent past? Maybe it didn't happen on this island in particular, but on one of the others."

Kono agreed when she walked up just in time to hear the comment. "Danny's right. I remember something about a murder that was unsolved a year before Five-0 formed. But wasn't it a man that was killed that time?"

Chin clearly remembered the case, even though he wasn't the one working it at the time, as even the cops on this island were awestruck at how vicious the murder had been, and how bloody the area had been when the body was discovered. "I'll contact PD to get the evidence and case file to see if this matches their victim," he said, backing off to allow the coroners to take the body away.

Steve noticed something in the sand once the body had been moved to a gurney. Squatting down, he used a glove-covered hand to pick up a medical alert tag, too worn down to actually get any impressions from it. But upon a closer look, he noted that it appeared to have been ripped off whoever had been wearing it. "It looks like our victim managed to get a piece of her killer, but there's no identification marks on it," he commented, handing it over to Kono so that she could put it in an evidence bag. "Chin, Kono, I need you to look over the previous case files and compare it to what we have here. Find out if it was a public killing like this and start a world-wide search to see if anything like this has popped up elsewhere."

It took about half an hour to get back to the palace with Steve at the Camaro's wheel-the man had a serious issue with speed. While Danny tried to track their victim's movement over the last couple of days, McGarrett made some calls to the airlines and hotel chain that she had been using, asking if there had been anything that had appeared out of the norm.

Meanwhile, the cousins were looking through the case file that had been electronically sent from the big island, trying to find similarities between that crime and the most recent murder. They discovered that the cases were nearly identical, including the way the victim was killed. The only thing out of place was that the male victim had been stabbed in the hamstring, probably to prevent him from getting away. Setting the parameters for a world-wide search, Kono idly wondered how many other victims there would be as Chin filled in her other coworkers.

Hours later, she had finished the search and had come up with a surprising amount of victims. Calling the rest of the team to the main room where they kept their computer table and plasmas, she pointed out what she had found.

"Okay, so I searched world-wide for any other victims who have been killed like our two victims here, and I found unsolved murders of thirty people dating back fifteen years. Our killer alternates between the sexes, killing a man and then a woman and so forth. The problem is that our victims are all over the world," Kono reported, bringing up a world map, using red dots to show where each murder had taken place.

McGarrett stared at the world map and at the dots that represented every victim ever found. "No one has any leads in any of these cases?" he asked, wondering why their killer would travel the world to kill.

"Three years ago in Prague, the victim somehow managed to get a partial picture of the killer before he was killed. When police and forensics investigated, they found a cellphone lying by the victim's hand, and found a picture on it that had been taken seconds before the murder occurred," Kono swiped a hand across the SMART table, throwing the image on a plasma screen. "As you can see, we have no facial features, but our guy is Caucasian with red hair. But other than this, we have nothing solid to go on."

"I reviewed where our vic had been the days before her death, following her purchases, and found something interesting two days before she was killed," Danny told everyone else. "She stopped at one of the most popular bars near the beach, one of the few who have video surveillance. This is what I found."

The video played on one of the plasmas, showing Alyssa Lisbon as she order a fruity cocktail at the bar, her body swaying in time to the music that wasn't heard to the team as there was no audio connected to the visual file. When Danny pointed to the far side of the screen the others saw what he had seen.

There was a man with short red hair watching their victim with a disturbing intensity that made the Five-0 team shudder from the other side of the screen. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, and nothing about him stood out other than the fact that the man's eyes were dangerously dark.

"I found nothing with facial recognition, so I don't know who he is, but at least we have an image to use and compare to anyone we catch," Danny said.

"When I called the hotel our victim had checked in at, I was told that she had called the front desk demanding why her room hadn't been cleaned. When the concierge checked the maids logs, he discovered that the room had been cleaned that morning, so maybe our suspect entered her room and took a personal look around," McGarrett reported his findings. "I say that we go check out the room and the entire hotel. Maybe someone saw something that could help us catch this bastard."

While Chin and Kono looked around the room, Steve and Danny talked to any guests they ran across, including the hotel employees. Unfortunately, no one saw anything during Alyssa's stay. Even though there had been nothing from the other guests, Chin and Kono had discovered something that would help them get one step closer to the killer.

"Steve, we found a name tag that possibly belongs to our suspect. The strange thing is that it's an airline tag from a stewardess or one of the captains," showing McGarrett the tag, Chin watched as his boss's face paled when he recognized something on the plastic pin.

"Chin, this is the same airline that Alyssa used. I need you to check every victim and see what kind of transportation that they used. I think that this might be the clue that leads us to our killer," the head of Five-0 gripped the name tag as he memorized the name on it.

_James_.

The airline had reluctantly given the Five-0 team their list of employees after a warrant had been obtained, especially when Chin confirmed that each of their victims used their flight service and had nothing else in common. They didn't like the idea that the task force was investigating them, but they understood that there could be a killer working for them and that if nothing was done, they could be facing a serious lawsuit in the future.

It was a fairly lengthy list that was split between each member. They immediately excluded any people who didn't have red hair, leaving them with a couple handfuls of people to check out. One or two were dead for the last six murders so that excluded them from the investigation. A couple had solid alibis for some of the other deaths. Further checks left them with only three people to check out with the name 'James', and all three of them had suspicious backgrounds.

Leaving Kono to perform a more in depth back ground check, the three men split up and headed to their suspects residences-each suspect had a vacation home in Hawaii, which made thing so much easier in locating them and collaborating with other law enforcement agencies.

Danny pulled up to a nice house in a quiet neighbourhood. Something about this situation didn't sit right with him. He felt as if he was being watched, and it unnerved him. Making sure he had his badge and gun with him, he felt somewhat better, but he still decided to err on the side of caution. Heading up the walkway that was lined with colourful flowers, he stopped at the door and raised a closed fist to knock.

McGarrett didn't have a very long drive, so when he pulled up to the house his suspect supposedly lived at, he was surprised when he realized that the place was a large office building and not a house. Calling Kono with the information, she told him that Chin had the same problem.

Worry suddenly blossomed in the ex-SEAL's gut. "Kono, can you get any satellite access and check on Danny's location?" he asked the rookie.

The sound of Kono's footsteps echoed faintly through the phone, indicating that she had been in her office when he had called. It took a minute, but Kono finally came back on the line with a haunting answer. "Satellite imagery show that the address Danny is checking out is an actual house. There's a high fence surrounding the property and it almost seems to be a fortress," she told her boss.

"Okay. Call Chin and tell him to meet me there. I don't like this. Something smells off," Steve said and hung up abruptly. He threw his truck into gear and tore off down the road, using the inbuilt sirens and lights to warn people to stay out of his way.

Danny tried to hide his nervousness when the door open and a red haired man stood in front of him. "Hi, I'm Detective William with the Governor's task force. There was a death nearby and we would like to know if you've seen anything unusual in the last couple of days," he said, twisting the truth a little, just to be on the safe side.

The man nodded, waving the detective inside. "I did see something a little off the other day. There was a man who didn't look right. It was as if he was waiting for something," the man said, offering a cup of coffee that Danny politely declined.

"Can you describe him for me?" Danny asked, taking a quick, inconspicuous peek around the house, his blue eyes landing on a photo album that somehow seemed out of place for the neat family room.

"Yeah, in fact, he looked a lot like you!" the man, _James_, as he was their suspect, swung a large, meaty fist around, landing a solid hit to the side of Danny's head.

Stunned, Danny tried to fight off their killer, but ended up on the floor with a hand wrapped around his throat. Struggling, he tried to get the appendage away from his throat, but failed miserably. A lucky hit with the palm of his hand freed him from suffocation, and he rolled away, trying to get to his feet so that he could grab his gun a protect himself. As he tried to get to the door, the hand returned, throwing the detective to the ground with enough force to make him black out for a couple of seconds, and it was enough to let James grab the cuffs dangling from the belt and cuff Danny's hands in front of him.

Standing over the detective, James Brass shuddered as adrenalin spiked through his system. Wiping the blood away from the detective's lucky hit, he sighed as he dragged the man to a chair that seemed more solid than it looked and secured the handcuffs to the piece of furniture. Slipping his jacket on, he used a rag and a large strip of duct tape to silence the other man before he could cause any type of racket that would have his neighbours calling the police. That's when he heard the sound of screeching tires and he instinctively knew that he was royally screwed.

Unable to move or make a sound, Danny was extremely glad when he heard the tires screeching against the pavement outside. He knew that it signalled that his partner had just arrived, but deep down, he had a feeling that it probably was too late.

McGarrett swore when he noticed the Camaro parked outside the house, empty. Using his cell phone, he called for backup, hoping that the requested units would get there before anything happened. Instead, he and the newly arrived Chin Ho proceeded to clear the houses on either side of their confirmed suspects place. During the ensuing confusion, the police units arrived with sirens wailing and lights flashing, causing more chaos among the civilians. It was hard keeping everyone calm and behind a newly erected police tape barrier, but the officers managed it. As SWAT and more backup arrived on the scene, the Five-0 team was getting more nervous as they were forced to wait for someone to try and get through to the suspect inside the house. Each attempt to call the house phone failed as no one answered.

Kono kept an ear on the chatter over the air waves, ready to call Danny's ex-wife to tell her before she heard anything bad from any news channel that would certainly be at the scene by now. Trying to stay calm, she found herself doing something that she hadn't done in a very long time.

She prayed.

Joining the team that was preparing to storm the house, McGarrett made sure that the ambulance was on standby, just in case they needed the vehicle, because, as most cases would testify, as soon as the suspect was encountered, things never stuck to the original plan. Once he was finished strapping on his vest and checking to make sure that Chin had his on properly, he turned to the SWAT team leader and nodded, indicating that they were ready. Within seconds the signal was given and the heavily armed men broke down the door and swarmed through the opening. They spread out, ready to check each room, but they didn't have far to go. Just twenty feet away from the door stood their suspect who was using Danny as a hostage, holding a blade to his throat.

"Put the weapon down!" The order was repeated by different men, trying to intimidate James into losing his knife.

Instead, the red head grinned sadistically-his facial features twisted into something horrifically demented- and faced the team head on. "Fuck you," he told them and swiped the knife across Danny's exposed throat. He didn't feel it as he was shot down where he stood, ending the threat that he posed to the other officers.

"Danny!"McGarrett cried out, unaware that Chin had whispered the same thing. As one, the two men ran to their teammate, one stemming the flow of blood and the other freeing the detective's hands. They worked as a team until they were gently ushered away by the paramedics who operated with such a sense of urgency that the older detective had hardly ever felt before. Instead, Chin tried to keep himself from running to Danny's side and interrupting the stabilizing process that the paramedics had started. Then he remembered McGarrett and placed a hand on the man's arm.

"Let them work, brah. Go get cleaned up while I go update Kono, and then we can head to the hospital," Chin said, motioning to the bloodied hands that were shaking from too much adrenalin and fear.

McGarrett nodded and headed outside just in time to see the ambulance take off like a bat out of hell. The thought that it was his partner struggling to live inside the emergency vehicle turned his stomach and he retched into a nearby shrub, grimacing at the taste of bile and breakfast mixed as one. Making it to the Camaro, he grabbed a baby wipe from the glove box and proceeded to wipe the blood from his hands, trying to ignore the way that his body shook now that everything was calming down at the house. He didn't notice when Chin gently helped him into the passenger seat or buckle him up or even close the door. He didn't even realize that the former HPD detective was driving them to the hospital, informing someone on the phone that he was a in a state of shock. What did register in his numb mind was the sudden, sharp sting to his cheek.

Raising a hand to his face, McGarrett realized that Chin had slapped him out of his state of shock. They were on the side of the road with the four ways blinking, maybe twenty or thirty minutes away from the crime scene they had just left. "Chin? What happened?" he asked, confused, wondering why his cheek hurt. And as if that was all it needed, the memories came flooding back. "Danny! How's Danny?"

"We're on our way to check up on him, Steve. I had to pull over in order to snap you out of your shock," Chin explained, placing his hands on the steering wheel after disengaging the four way lights. "Kono's currently updating Rachel so that she can prepare Grace before they see anything on the news and she'll meet us at the main doors."

"Okay," Steve replied in a small voice before he pulled himself together. "How far are we from the hospital?"

"We're maybe ten minutes out," Chin said. "Why?"

"I need to inform the governor that we got the bastard," McGarrett was busy pulling his phone from his back pocket while he answered the other man. He was put through to Governor Pat Jameson right away, informing her that they had killed the man who had been their main suspect in the murders and that Danny had been seriously injured in the confrontation. CSI would look through the house and do their best to find any clues, but there was a large possibility that they had caught their man.

"You keep an eye on Detective Williams. I'll head up the investigation until we have answers," she told the head of Five-0 and hung up, heading to take charge of the investigation, just like she said she would.

The hospital was a sight of organized, silent chaos. Nurses took care of their patients silently and efficiently, trying to create minimal fuss as they could so that any visiting family members wouldn't become upset at anything that seemed out of the ordinary from the controlled environment. The nurse who was stationed at the front desk directed the pair of Five-0 detectives to the emergency operation waiting room, watching as the two headed off with a heavy step and heart.

Kono hurried to her cousin and boss when she saw them enter the waiting room. When she had arrived, she couldn't wait for the other two members of the team at the main door so she headed inside and inquired about Danny and was told to wait in the waiting room. There, she had been busy pacing a small corner of the room, anxiously waiting to see if her friend would pull through.

It took a good two hours before someone came out and updated the trio, who had long since almost lost their mind waiting for any type of news-if they would be visiting their friend, or helping to arrange his funeral. The doctor, who ironically was Malia, Chin's ex fiancée, greeted them with a small, sad smile before she told them that Danny had pulled through the emergency surgery and that everything would depend on how he fared through the next few days. She described the wound to them, cutting back on the details she knew would haunt them and sadly informed the trio that Danny's heart had stopped not long after he had been wheeled inside the room, but by some miracle, it had restarted on its own.

"Can we go and see him?" McGarrett asked.

"Give me another couple of hours to make sure that he is stabilizing before I have you traipsing through, okay? The surgery was hard on his body, and we want to get his blood volume up to help him," Malia replied, heading off when the head of the team nodded his consent.

Malia kept her promise. She brought the team to a private room, letting them stand outside of the closed door as a nurse finished her rounds after another two hours had passed. "I can only let one of you in at a time, and I need you to dress in a set of scrubs and a mask to protect Danny from anything dangerous out here," she said. "Who's going in first?"

"Chin, Kono, go in and reassure yourselves while I go update the governor. I'll stay with him during the night," McGarrett ordered, leaving the others behind before anyone else could get a word in edge wise. Once he was outside, he sat down on a nearby bench and dialled the governor's private line. He informed her that Danny had survived the surgery and that the doctors wanted him to stabilize and recover further before moving him out of ICU. He also told her that if she sent a detective down the next day, he would give his statement, and it would be over and done with.

Jameson agreed, and wished Danny luck in recovering. Meanwhile, she told him, Five-0 would be on stand-by, but she assured him that no one would call upon the team unless it was for something as high profile as their recent investigation.

Thanking the woman, McGarrett hung up and took several deep breaths in order to help him build up the courage to enter the hospital once again. It took him ten minutes to calm down and enter the hospital and head up to Danny's room, trying not to think of the blood that had ended up on his hands. There, he witnessed Chin comforting his cousin as she cried into his shoulder. "What happened?" he asked.

"Malia's concerned about Danny's breathing, so she's hooking him up on an oxygen mask. She doesn't want to intubate him with his injury, but she doesn't know what to do if his breathing gets any worse," Chin informed his team leader. "He started to go blue when Kono was with him."

That explained everything. McGarrett waited until Malia joined them in the hall before speaking to her in quiet tones.

"I want the three of us to have unlimited access to see Danny. We know how to make sure that he stays calm so that he doesn't ruin his throat any more than it is now," he told her, smiling when the doctor nodded.

"I'll allow it. In fact, here's what I'll do. I'll make notations in all of your files that you have unlimited access to each other's rooms whenever you check in here," she replied and left to start making changes.

"Go home and get some sleep. This is going to be a long week," McGarrett said, using his 'I'm making this an order' voice-something that he rarely used on his teammates. He watched in silence as the cousins left the hospital and then he turned to change into a pair of scrubs and placed a mask upon his face, and he entered his partner's room, laying a hand on his arm, stilling the restless actions from the Jersey native.

That night, and the rest of the week, the Five-0 members rotated in eight hour shifts, keeping an eye on Danny, keeping him calm and talking to him whenever he woke up from his drug induced sleep and he never remembered the few words they exchanged, or waking up for those short periods of time either.

When he officially woke up on the ninth day of his hospital stay, he was surprised to see McGarrett sitting by his bed, a silent, immovable sentinel. As he tried to move his arm, he groaned in pain-his muscles had seized up on him from the lack of activity, and he managed to scare the ex-SEAL. Trying to croak out a question, Danny was glad when Steve placed a couple of ice chips in his parched mouth. Letting the icy goodness leak down his throat, he tried to ask where he was and what happened, but, instead, he was rewarded with another sliver of ice.

Steve knew what his partner wanted to know. In quick, short sentences, he told the other man what had happened to him, informing him that they had caught the killer in an official capacity. When Danny's eyes began to drop, he told the man to get some more sleep so that he could have enough energy to deal with Grace the next time she and Rachel stopped by to visit him.

Later that week, when Chin and Kono stopped by, Steve reflected on how the people in this room made up his ohana, his family. The feeling, however, was completed when Grace ran quietly into the room, tossing her backpack into a corner and demanding a hug from her aunt and uncles. He nodded to Rachel as she assured herself that her ex-husband would recover and that Grace would be fine for the rest of the day. She informed Steve that she and her new husband, Stanley Edwards, had decided that Grace would be allowed to stay with her father for the next couple of weeks while they went away on one of Stan's working vacations. It was something of a relief when she said those words, knowing that it would kill Danny if he couldn't see his daughter for such a period of time.

Of course, Grace was, at this time, babbling to Chin and Kono about becoming a detective like them when she got older. They both knew that if she did become one of their own he would have one hell of a fight on her hands, considering her father would be very against the idea, insisting that she do something less dangerous with her life.

Steve McGarrett watched as his partner was released from the hospital. He knew that his partner was a bit upset that he had misjudged their suspect, and ended up getting hurt because of it. Yet, the head of Five-0 had voice his opinion many times, stating that they were all human, and that they had no idea how their suspect would have reacted if things had been different, even if it had been any other member of the team.

"We're human, Danno. If you cut us, we bleed the same color. We bleed red. Don't go beating yourself up because you were taken by surprise. It's happened to the best of us, and it'll come around and bit us in the ass again and again, until we're dead. And even then, it might just keep happening to us," Steve had said.

Danny had just shot his partner a look, clearly stating that he knew that this was not his usual gung-ho partner standing in front of him, the one with the 'we can do anything and not get busted for it since we're special cops with the governor's backing' attitude. "Who are you and what have you done to the real Steve McGarrett?" he had replied, and then he smirked, knowing that what McGarrett had told him was true. "You're right. I can't keep doing this. I know that it really wasn't my fault, but…"

"Good. Now, we have to discuss this little thing of making sure that Grace is hired for Five-0 in ten or so years from now," Steve threw a smirk back at his stunned partner, laughing outright when the words had sunk into the grey matter under his skull and messy blonde hair.

"What the…? No! Grace is not going to become a detective if I have any say about it-and I have plenty to say. She's going to become a school teacher on this pineapple infested hell hole of an island," still mumbling about inconsiderate partners trying to scare him to an early grave, Danny got into the Camaro's passenger seat and closed the door, his hands waving around the space in front of him as he tried to prove a point to his partner who was just getting into the driver's side, the appendages pausing for a second to click the seatbelt into place and then resuming their role in the rant.

_Eleven years later._

Grace Williams stood proud and tall in her blue uniform as she and forty other newly graduated law enforcement officers listened to the speech that the current governor of Hawaii was making. He was congratulating their new police officers, telling them that things would get harder before they got any easier, if it ever did in their chosen line of work. When he turned to microphone over to a familiar man, her heart skipped a couple of beats out of recognition and respect for his character strengths and defects. Steve McGarrett limped his way over to the podium, smiling down to the forty newbies assembled before him.

"So, I suppose congratulations are in order," he started off, tapping a hand on the edge of the podium-a sign that he wanted to be anywhere else but there. "But I can't tell you that I'm glad that you passed these exams. I will tell you that being a police officer is that hardest thing out there to do, other than enlisting in the armed forces. The things you will end up seeing will drag at you for the rest of your life, trying to bring you down, and it just might succeed. The reason you're here though is because you're the toughest we have, and we know that you'll be able to do your jobs well.

"I remember when I was paired with a new transfer from Jersey, who had been here for six months because he followed his daughter here. He was the most annoying man I ever had the pleasure of knowing, but he showed me that sometimes, we all just need someone to lean on, to talk to. He became family in the most important way possible…by being there when I needed him, or when the team needed him. So, I guess what I'm telling you is that don't be afraid to go talk to someone, especially a professional, 'cause God knows, you'll be needing it in the future.

"Now, my real reason for being called up here on a bum leg is to announce that very few of you were considered Five-0 material, and fewer still were chosen to be a member of the taskforce. So, when I call you names, please come up to the stage and stand behind me," with that said, McGarrett, his hair graying at the temple and his face wrinkling around the eyes, called off a very short list of four people.

As he was joined by the founders of Five-0, McGarrett handed each member a special badge. Together, they handed the items over to their new owners and snapped off a salute to their new members.

Grace had tears in her eyes as she received her Five-0 badge. She kept a close eye on her father as he pinned it to her chest and as he kissed her forehead. It was a dream come true. She had watched as her father had come home after her mother and step-father had been killed, eyes red from crying as he had packed up her things and drove over to Uncle Steve's house, and once they had settled, all four of them had broken the news to her. And time and time again, she had watched as her father came home hurt, or sad, and yet she knew that despite what the job entailed, she wanted to be a member to the taskforce so that she could help people who were put in harsh situations.

Later that night, she lay awake, staring at the stars that twinkled so bright above her head when the team came down from their respective rooms at McGarrett's house, Kono supporting her cousin as Chin had aged since she had first met him. Everyone but her had suffered some sort of horrible injury in the past. Her father had suffered a cut throat that had left him fighting for life for more than a week. Steve: a leg injury that refused to heal properly, and leaving him in the office than rather in the field where he so desperately wanted to be. Old age had caught up to Chin, and with it, a heart defect that prevented him from ever being on a team again, but it didn't stop him from offering advice from his time on the taskforce or from HPD to those who asked him, or to those who needed help but were too timid to ask for it. As for Kono, well, she had received her fair share of wounds in the line of duty, but nothing that slowed her down just yet.

Leaning her head on her father's shoulder, she sighed as she thought about what had happened to the team over the years, including Governor Pat Jameson's murder and the consequent framing of McGarrett all the way to their current health conditions. Tilting her head just right, she caught sight of everyone else sitting on the lanai and smiled. "I'll do you all proud," she told them.

"We know, sweetheart," McGarrett replied for all of them. "You already have by just being here."

_**Translations.**__** (If nothing here matched up to what you know, blame it on those translation sites. It's where I got them from.)**_

_**Kama'aina—native Hawaiian**_

_**Haole—Caucasian**_

_**Ohana—family**_

_**Lanai—patio**_

_Hi people! This is my first attempt at a Hawaii Five-0 fic. I have become addicted to the remake and love the idea of Danny whump. And the season 1 finale left me wanting so much more, so I decided to write my own one shot. Since I haven't done anything with a serial killer, I thought, why not? So, sorry of the characters seem a little off, but I do try to portray them as I see them on the show._

_I am, however, sorry for not getting anything up before now. I love to procrastinate, it seems, as I think about what I write before even sitting down at the computer to hash out these one shots. This does not include how many times we lost power from the 27 of May through to the first week-end of June. And then my grandparents came down since my grandmother just had surgery to remove the pin from her leg that had been put in there three years ago when she broke her hip, and my parents left to go see my sister in that time frame. We had to wash the dog and clean out the gardens and mow the lawn and care for the new puppy we acquired…well, there's a rash of excuses, but at least they're true excuses!_

_I have the plot to a Transformers/SWAT fic running around in my head, so it shouldn't be too long before I have a multi chapter out, as while I plan it to be long, there shouldn't be a whole lot of chapters. I am also working on a new idea where John Sheppard from Stargate Atlantis is really Aragorn's little brother, Aramir, so the entire LotR 'verse will be AU._

_Hey, if you're reading this part of the author's note, can any of you readers direct me to a site for transcripts or whatever they're called. You know, the scripts for TV shows and movies online?_


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